Hi !I got the Leg Token last night and I am not on Heroic gear yet ! So, would you advice me to change my Crafted Legs ?Armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/a ... r/advancedI seems not advantage right now, the off-set legs give me soooo much mastery ! Seems better than the set.But ... i got Immolation Shoulderguards Heroic (322) which is gain in mastery more than Off-set Legs(260). So, im thinking im switch off-set Legs for the Set One and replace set shoulder with Immolation Shoulderguards Heroic one, until i get Heroic Morchok one.Ok the Shoulders are 8 ilvls difference, but that does not really matters, does it ? Also, im keeping 4pc which helps my 10m group a lot.

Edit: Well, i played around with chardev.org and missed about 100 Health, from 212010 to 211939. But the gain in terms of Avoidance were nice boost, from 15% both to 17.10% both !!! I think it a nice gain !!! And not so bad 100 less health !

the only think that I would say is increasing your dodge and parry doesn't help you much against most of the damage in DS as it unavoidable. Even the physical damage like Hagara, and impale won't be affected by avoidance. Therefore stamina would seem more important to me.

I would run lfrs you should be fine. But try and get the Tol Barad trinket Mirror, that will help you alot in dealing with the shadow damage. Getting atleast a two piece from the LFRs will help quite a bit.

I would run lfrs you should be fine. But try and get the Tol Barad trinket Mirror, that will help you alot in dealing with the shadow damage. Getting atleast a two piece from the LFRs will help quite a bit.

gronc

Is that trinket really necessary? Resistance Aura already gives 195 Shadow resistance, and I'd rather get the HUGE chunk of mastery that the VP trinket gives so I can finally hit the CTC cap.

I would run lfrs you should be fine. But try and get the Tol Barad trinket Mirror, that will help you alot in dealing with the shadow damage. Getting atleast a two piece from the LFRs will help quite a bit.

gronc

Is that trinket really necessary? Resistance Aura already gives 195 Shadow resistance, and I'd rather get the HUGE chunk of mastery that the VP trinket gives so I can finally hit the CTC cap.

For normal modes? Not really necessary especially with the ongoing nerf (which might be bumped up to 15% tomorrow). It is, however, very helpful for Zon'ozz and Yor'sahj heroics but again I wouldn't say it's absolutely necessary. Overall it's a great trinket though.

2pc LFR really isn't much of a game changer. You will reduce your overall damage taken slightly but it really isn't very important, as the absorb is quite small and you are never going to hold up a judgement or change rotation to get the shield up at a specific time. The LFR tier pieces are not a very large upgrade over 378 pcs that are well itemized. The shield from 2 pc will very rarely, if ever, save you in a death scenario and generally the shield is small enough where it alone will not change your healers behaviors. Not a very important bonus imo.

Wonton wrote:Is that trinket really necessary? Resistance Aura already gives 195 Shadow resistance, and I'd rather get the HUGE chunk of mastery that the VP trinket gives so I can finally hit the CTC cap.

Also, don't forget to glyph divine protection - that will help a lot with the magic damage that the mirror also assists with. The trinket is not necessary, but you can alternate it's use with divine protection to give you a great CD always available for Zonozz's pyschic drain and Yorshaj's stacking debuff. Most of the time, I wear the VP one but switch for those two bosses.

The mirror is probably the single most overpowered piece of tank gear in Cataclysm. I think Blizzard have said it was so good, we'll never see its like again. For shame.

I couldn't find any specific numbers on this, although I'll admit I didn't search outside of Maintankadin forums. Is there a point in gearing where Austere (+armor) meta gem becomes preferable to the Eternal (+block)?

"Ask stupid questions. Growth is fuelled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer,not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant."

But just wanted to say thanks to everyone on this whole site. I have learned so much. Last night had my first Normal Madness kill. Which might not seem like much but this is my first toon, on my first mmo ever, and it feel like an accomplishment. So thanks again.

Hello again! Thanks to the awesome info by Fenrir I've been able to itemize my gear better.

I would like to ask you all again to critique my gear and gemming selections. If you can point out any mistakes or think you can improve my stamina a bit (I am most likely going the stamina route, since as of now I just pug groups and am not in a core group, unless there is a significant advantage over avoidance or DPS that stacking stam isn't the way to go). Also, would like to know what to gem my red sockets with? Should I go 25 exp + 25 mastery, 25 parry + 25 mastery, or 25 parry and 37 stam? Thanks!!

Quick question, would the proc rate from RF souldrinker make it a better pick than a DS normal hand of morchok and the stat reallocation I could do with gems and such, so basically, is the dps of souldrinker and survivability it provides better than the stamina stacking I could do with the hand of morchok?

I got souldrinker normal and Hand of Morchok HM. and it depends. I am easily at block cap with souldrinker, and the plus on DPS with souldrinker is really nice. although the healing procc is a nice feature, your healers won't really see a difference tho, the ticks are about 2.8k average, having over 240k HP raidbuffed on our last Ultraxion HM encounter.The encounter was 5:02 mins and the healing procced about 29 times, which was 83k overall. so not even half of my health pool in 5 minutes.

so, do you a) need more tank dps to beat an enrage or b) out gear the content and want to do more dps for shits and giggles -> souldrinkerdo you need a bit more HP and more CTC because the boss demands it -> hand of Morchok.

Postverta, I went with Souldrinker and even put Landslide on it, so that tells you something about my priorities.

However, one thing I have noticed is that I often swap trinkets from Fire of the Deep to either Mirror of Broken Images (Zonozz, Yorshaj) or Stay of Execution (Madness). This lowers my CTC. So I either waste mastery on my main set or go under 102.4% CTC if I switch trinkets for specfic fights. It might be smart to use Hand of Morchok to make up some of the difference. If I am lucky enough to get a heroic HoM, I'd probably put windwalk on it. I'd probably need more of a gear switch than just the weapon, especially with stay of execution, to keep at 102.4% but it would be a start.

If I read Theck's numbers right, SD is slightly better dps than a Hand of Morchok of a lower tier, but the difference is small (160 dps comparing normal SD with heroic HoM) so that probably should not phase us if we are focussed on survival.

For those of you who use WoWReforge.com, how many of you use custom stat weights to balance 8% hit/26 exp while maintaining tCTC? If you do, what are your stat weights?

I always feel like my reforging/gemming needs a bit of work (in an OCD sort of way). So I'd like to get this to work since I don't trust AMR to do it. I do use Chardev, but again, I feel that I may be missing something.

If I gem and reforge planning on using food and elixirs to get me to ctc, is that a bonus to gemming and reforging to reach cap and using food and flasks for stamina? If there is a difference is it significant enough that I being poor, and pushing the limits of my time online, (after 25 years wife still wants to spend time with me... go figure), should spend what meager resources I have on food and elixirs? The guild provides feasts and flasks, and occasional help with special needs.

If I gem and reforge planning on using food and elixirs to get me to ctc, is that a bonus to gemming and reforging to reach cap and using food and flasks for stamina? If there is a difference is it significant enough that I being poor, and pushing the limits of my time online, (after 25 years wife still wants to spend time with me... go figure), should spend what meager resources I have on food and elixirs? The guild provides feasts and flasks, and occasional help with special needs.

gronc

Using a stam scroll and an elixir of the master nets you an extra 25 points worth of itemization vs using a stam flask. Plus you get the added flexibility of adding the option of more armor or resistance for certain encounters.

The mastery food is significantly more effective than the dodge food for CTC, Theck has done the calculations somewhere but don't remember where off the top of my head.

It's up to you if it's worth the time investment. To me min/maxing is fun and I feel compelled to do it YMMV.

But just wanted to say thanks to everyone on this whole site. I have learned so much. Last night had my first Normal Madness kill. Which might not seem like much but this is my first toon, on my first mmo ever, and it feel like an accomplishment. So thanks again.

gronc

Congrats! I'm in the same boat (first character, first MMO, only started in Cata), but I'm still grinding up through LFR. The unfortunate thing is that my guild is only me and a few friends and all the "LFM DS 10" posts in chat ask for the achievement... so I'm not sure how I'm going to start raiding the Normal mode exactly. We'll see.

Gab wrote:The mastery food is significantly more effective than the dodge food for CTC, Theck has done the calculations somewhere but don't remember where off the top of my head.

It's up to you if it's worth the time investment. To me min/maxing is fun and I feel compelled to do it YMMV.

FYI, it's about 80 mastery rating for 1% block and 180 dodge/parry rating for 1% dodge/parry. This is why on a piece of gear like "215 Dodge/108 Expertise", it's actually mathematically better to reforge Dodge --> Mastery than Expertise --> Mastery from a CTC perspective.

Wonton wrote:Congrats! I'm in the same boat (first character, first MMO, only started in Cata), but I'm still grinding up through LFR. The unfortunate thing is that my guild is only me and a few friends and all the "LFM DS 10" posts in chat ask for the achievement... so I'm not sure how I'm going to start raiding the Normal mode exactly.

Youtube the normal fights, noting the difference from LFR version, grab a couple of your friends and start your own raid. Spam trade with "LFM DS 10"...and wala. :p If you can't get your foot in the door, just make your own door. It's a pain spamming to fill a group, but somebody's gotta do it.

Before the last raid I was at around 3200 mastery with like 15%parry and 14% dodge (had only stacked mastery as much as I could up to 102.4% CTC raidbuffed and then gone for stamina as I thought was the best thing to do). However the raid went pretty shitty wiped a couple of times on HC yorsahj, HC warlord Zonozz and HC hagara. Hagara was the worst, everytime I was out of CDs on focused assoult I died instantly until we changed tank and I went healer.

After the raid the GM + officers wanted to talk to me and said that they thought I was stacking too much mastery and needed way more dodge + parry, that I should get that fixed as soon as possible and they said they also thought that the stacking dodge trinket that drops from normal spine (whish I passed on the week before) is really good for me.

I have now as you can see changed my gems and such to loose alot of mastery and gained alot of dodge + parry for the loss of some stamina. However I'm confused, this goes against everything I've learned here on the forum, that I should stack as much mastery as possible to the CTC cap and then go for as much stamina as possible, and I've also read that the stacking dodge trinket is terrible for prot paladins.

What do you think people? Do you think this change will be to the better or worse? And what would you do?